The Internet Wonderful for Many Things…Futuristic Home…Tallest Building…details in the latest DMM e-news

If it Can’t be Shipped, it Should be at the Mall

The internet is wonderful for many things, but it can’t do everything, no matter how hard it tries. For the things it can’t do at all, it behooves shopping malls to put an emphasis on those things. Things like eat a fantastic meal, or watch a movie on a giant screen with luxurious seating and surround sound, or the various physical activities that we’ve turned into entertainment — bowling, ice skating, rock climbing and even race car driving (that’s your humble newsletter editor earlier this year at Autobahn Indoor Speedway at Palisades Center in West Nyack, NY). A recent article in the Wall Street Journal spotlighted high-tech golf driving ranges and skydiving simulators as examples of entertainment venues many malls are leaning on over their traditional over retail components, in order to keep consumers interested in the retail segment. According to the WSJ article, “investors are betting on the entertainment trend, with some of them showing decent profits.” RetailDive.com agrees with WSJ’s take, noting “the very real tendency of consumers these days to prioritize spending on experiences and shared activities with friends over the accumulation of things.”

Connected Home A Reality? In Minnesota it Is

The Mall of America is the largest mall in America, so it seems only natural that it has the most futuristic (and current) depiction of a home available, especially since Best Buy is a close corporate neighbor. As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, Best Buy, which is also based in Minnesota, built a temporary house that showcased its home connections technologies. Best Buy has connected home departments in most of its stores. According to the Star-Tribune, the Best Buy Tech Home, which was located in the mall’s rotunda through Sept. 17, featured “several rooms — a kitchen, living room, office and bedroom — outfitted with smart products. The idea is to show consumers how doorbells, lights, music, home security and even refrigerators can be controlled from a smartphone or tablet and how it could make their lives easier or better.” Best Buy executives have said they see the category as being an area of growth.

Wilshire Grand Officially Tallest Building West of Mississippi River

The view is spectacular (if not a bit dangerous) but earlier this month it became official: the Wilshire Grand in Los Angeles, a building featuring 400,000 square feet dedicated to a 900-room hotel, office space, and “cutting-edge restaurants, businesses and attractive nightlife offerings” is now officially the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. The “spire”,a 200,000-pound, 294-foot tube mounted to the eastern side of the $1.1 billion tower, was added earlier this month to the structure. The tower, according to Los Angeles Downtown News, is expected to open in early 2017.

DMM: Data with Experience!

There’s an old saying: “What’s old is new.” DMM has more than 25 years’ worth of archived data, including thousands of listings with hundreds of thousands of tenants, contacts and location information. Past DMM data can be analyzed to forecast future data or trends. Everybody’s talking about “big data” and “data science”, basically applying sophisticated analytic techniques to large datasets. One of the things analysts and economists are doing with DMM data is predictive modeling — using historical data to make predictions about the future. Click here for more detail.